Cookery
by awesomesen
Summary: Sorata and Arashi cook dinner. [one shot]


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_beta read by the lovely **Sophia Prester**!_

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_Cookery_

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Since there were four of them, chores were quickly divided up on a roughly day-to-day basis. Kamui and Yuzuriha might clean the house while Sorata and Arashi cooked the meals, or maybe Sorata and Kamui had cleaning duty while the girls cooked. There were never any serious arguments from this arrangement, and Arashi would never dare bring it up, but there was nothing she hated more than cooking with Sorata also there.

She believed in recipes and recipe books, and with one in hand she considered herself a very good cook indeed. There were a few recipes she knew by heart, of course, but it was more the idea of the book than the need for it: the writers had known what they were doing, and Arashi didn't want to be the one at fault for ruining an entire meal by adding an extra teaspoon of salt.

Sorata, on the other hand, didn't seem to know any recipes. He'd dart around the kitchen, adding things seemingly at a whim to the pot, and the one time he had tried to follow a recipe he had to stop twice to ask Arashi what it meant to sauté something, and also what the difference between broiling and boiling was, did it matter if he did the latter? Not that he couldn't do these things normally, she knew, just he hadn't actually known the words. And yet, after cooking was over, he'd have a beautiful looking and delicious tasting meal of whatever kind of thing he had chosen to make, far surpassing her own meals.

Her consolation was that he wasn't very thorough when it came their turn to clean, but that wasn't really a consolation at all. At Ise, Arashi had been complimented regularly for her cooking skills, and she could hardly believe some tall, obnoxious guy from Kansai could amble into a kitchen, throw things into a pot, and walk out with a better meal then she could. It was possible that the cookbooks themselves were wrong, but she had great faith in their power, and didn't like the thought.

"Hey, 'Neechan, you done with the onions? 'Cause I kinda need to… hey, what'd the onions ever do to you? No need to glare at them like that… or at me." He said, pouting, then fidgeted slightly. Arashi _had_ been slicing the onions while she thought, and she knew he probably needed them, but he was clearly reluctant to take them from a girl with a glare and a knife.

He eased the cutting board away from her, pulling the edge of it with almost exaggerated slowness along the counter until she wasn't in front of it anymore before snatching it up and hurrying to the stove. The onions hissed as he poured them into the frying pan… did he even measure? Arashi felt oddly indignant.

Sorata turned from the pot, and made a slight face when he saw she was still glaring. "'Neechan, if you're really so offended by those onions, you really just ought to say so instead of giving 'em the stink eye."

"And if you're the one I'm angry at?" Arashi said without thinking, partially because she _was_ curious as to the reply, and mostly because it was the truth--even if the reason was rather stupid.

"Aw," he joked, "No one can be mad at me! I'm way too charming for that, not to mention too cute…"

As usual, his joking fell flat before the seriousness of Arashi. Pouting in a rather exaggerated way, Sorata turned back to his pot. Arashi carefully measured out two tablespoons of oil, as per her recipe, and added it to her mixing bowl, trying to pour evenly (also as the recipe said). It just… wasn't _fair_, she thought bitterly, properly annoyed now at both Sorata and her own silliness. One of the first things anyone learned was that following the rules was the best way to get good results; whether in school or when trying to cook. It stood to reason that the cookbooks were the best way to learn to cook, so it made sense that the better you followed their instructions the better your results would be--it made sense. Arashi frowned.

She stirred her mixture rather viciously, and Sorata looked over at her again, wary. "Um, 'Neechan… what's wrong, anyway?"

She was silent. He fidgeted. "If you're gonna be mad, you ought'ta at least say why. So that things don't end violently and…" he trailed off, and fidgeted again. "A--and," he drawled, quickly changing the subject when faced with Arashi's glare full on, "Could you pass the pepper? I need it."

"Do you even _have_ a recipe to follow?" Arashi snapped without thinking.

Sorata blinked at her for a minute, trying to figure out what she meant, and then began to laugh. Not just a little, either--he was really _laughing_, cracking up. He was doubled over, hand over his mouth, and he would have looked like he was ill were he quiet and were his shoulders not shaking.

_Arashi_ felt ill. And, judging by the heat of her face, she was probably also bright red. Oh, this was why she shouldn't have said anything! She had never felt so embarrassed… well, not since the last time he had found her amusing, anyway.

At last, he straightened up, and grinned at her. "You're mad 'cause I don't follow a recipe?" he giggled. "You're all worked up over _that_?"

"You're… laughing at me," she said slowly, starting to feel angry instead of ashamed.

"Well, _yeah_." Sorata, to his credit, tried to stop grinning. It didn't work. She glared at him again. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, he was more serious (although a grin still played at the corners of his mouth).

"'Neechan… you're really cute."

Somehow, she wasn't comforted.

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End file.
